The Sanibel Island Light or Point Ybel Light is the first lighthouse on Florida's Gulf coast north of Key West and the Dry Tortugas. It is located on the eastern tip of Sanibel Island, and was built to mark the entrance to San Carlos Bay for ships calling at the port of Punta Rassa, across San Carlos Bay from Sanibel Island.

Since I live on Sanibel Island, I take many photos of my island. A while back I was taking some photos for the SantivaChronicle.com on an evening cruise around the island and this image presented itself.

The causeway is the best entrance to the islands anyone could want. The waters of Pine Island Sound are beautiful, no matter the weather. So, even on a cloudy grayish evening, the view is perfect.

Sea turtle nesting season begins May 1st and ends October 31st each year. Sea turtles started nesting early this year, with the first nest on April 25.

Sea turtles are among the world's oldest creatures. These ancient reptiles have long fascinated people around the world. On Sanibel and Captiva, where the beaches provide a subtropical nesting area for threatened loggerhead and endangered green turtles, more than 100 island residents volunteer each summer as part of the Conservation Foundation's Sea Turtle Research and Monitoring Program.

The Loggerhead sea turtle nesting season officially started on April 20 this year, which is a couple of weeks earlier than normal due to the water temperatures varying this season.

What that means for people on Sanibel is to keep the beaches dark and not disturb the female turtles coming ashore to build nests and lay eggs, or the hatchlings which will be burrowing out of the sand and hopefully heading for the waters of Gulf of Mexico.

The brown anole, also known as the Bahaman anole or De la Sagra's Anole, is a lizard native to Cuba and the Bahamas. It has been widely introduced elsewhere, by being sold as a pet lizard, and is now found in Florida and as far north in the United States as southern Georgia, Texas, Hawaii, Southern California.

This species is highly invasive. In its introduced range, it reaches exceptionally high population densities, is capable of expanding its range very quickly, and both out-competes and consumes many species of native lizards. The brown anole's introduction into the United States in the early 1970s has altered the behavior and triggered a negative effect on populations of the native Carolina anole, also known as the green anole, which have generally been relegated to the treetops.

A friend sent me the following thoughts and I think they are quite appropriate.

In reflecting on this spirit of what this day is meant to commemorate, we thought of the love, time, and energy that mothers put into the hope that one day the world might be a better place for their child. We too want to strive for a better world for our children. One in which we've transcended our narrow utilitarian approach to other human beings, ensured a healthy planet that can sustain humankind, and have held corporations and our government accountable to the belief that they should be maximizing love and caring, kindness and generosity, empathy and compassion, social and economic justice, peace and nonviolence, and environmental sustainability.

The octopus is much celebrated for its intelligence and use of
camouflage, but one of its most remarkable achievements is how it moves.

The animal somehow controls eight long, flexible arms with a
fluidity that can make it look like animated spaghetti. The problem of
controlling this kind of movement is, as scientists say, "not trivial."

Three Israeli researchers set out to record and analyze the
movements of an octopus to plumb the secrets of how it coordinates its
arms during crawling. They found that the brain of the octopus doesn't
have to do everything, because the arms, in effect, have a mind of their
own.

An octopus has a kind of mixed body plan. Its head and eyes have
a left and right side, so in that sense, the animal is bilateral. But
its arms radiate out from its mouth like the spokes of a bicycle. This
radial structure is more like that of a starfish.

The octopus does have a preferred direction of movement, at
about 45 degrees to the direction its eyes are facing. Because of how
its eyes are built, that angle is optimal for having a good view of its
surroundings.

Analysis showed it can move in any direction without changing
its head position. The head and body are controlled independently of the
arms movement. When an arm was active in crawling, it always has the
same motion. It would shorten and elongate like an inchworm, pushing the
whole creature along.

Chickee ("house" in the Creek and Mikasuki languages spoken by the Seminoles and Miccosukees) is a shelter supported by posts, with a raised floor, a thatched roof and open sides.

The chickee style of architecture - palmetto thatch over a bald cypress log frame - was adopted by Seminoles during the Second (1835-42) and Third (1855-58) Seminole Wars as U.S. troops pushed them deeper into the Everglades and surrounding territory. Before the Second Seminole War, the Seminoles had lived in log cabins. Similar structures were used by the tribes in south Florida when the Spanish first arrived in the 16th century. Each chickee had its own purpose and together they were organized within a camp-type community. Chickees were used for cooking, sleeping, and eating.

This is the time of year in south Florida that the colors are staggering. Everywhere you look something is blooming and the buds are emerging. The scent of Gardenia and Night Blooming Jasmine is in the air.

The hibiscus is not native, but it has lovely flowers that grace us for a day, before they fold up as the light dims in the evening.

"During Derby Week, Louisville is the capital of the world," John Steinbeck wrote in 1956."This Kentucky Derby, whatever it is - a race, an emotion, a turbulence, an explosion - is one of the most beautiful and violent and satisfying things I have ever experienced."

The Kentucky Derby is a horse race held annually in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, on the first Saturday in May, capping the two-week-long Kentucky Derby Festival. The race, with a length of one and a quarter miles at Churchill Downs, is a Grade I stakes race for three-year-old Thoroughbreds. Colts and geldings carry 126 pounds and fillies 121 pounds.

The race is known in the United States as "The Most Exciting Two Minutes In Sports" or "The Fastest Two Minutes in Sports" for its approximate duration, and is also called "The Run for the Roses" for the blanket of roses draped over the winner. It is the first leg of the American Triple Crown and is followed by the Preakness Stakes, then the Belmont Stakes. The Kentucky Derby has been run every consecutive year since 1875.

The earliest May Day celebrations appeared in pre-Christian times, with the Floralia, festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, held April 27 during the Roman Republic era, and with the Walpurgis Night celebrations of the Germanic countries. The day was a traditional summer holiday in many pre-Christian European pagan cultures.

May Basket Day is still practiced in discrete pockets of the country. It went something like this: As the month of April rolled to an end, people would begin gathering flowers and candies and other goodies to put in May baskets to hang on the doors of friends, neighbors and loved ones on May 1. In some communities, hanging a May basket on someone's door was a chance to express romantic interest. If a basket-hanger was seen by the recipient, the recipient would give chase and try to steal a kiss from the basket-hanger.

Perhaps considered quaint now, in decades past May Basket Day, like the ancient act of dancing around the maypole, was a widespread rite of spring in the United States.